CHAPTER 7* THE ILLUSION OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
2. THE COMMUNIZATION OF OUTER MONGOLIA
Soviet Russia encroaches on Outer Mongolia
Shifting our focus to the Far East, we see that the situation there bore absolutely no resemblance
to international cooperation. First of all, we should establish the fact that post-revolutionary Soviet
Russia, or the RSFSR (Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic), as it called itself at the time,
had gained a great deal of power. After the revolution, the communist state was fast on its way toachieving its objective, i.e., becoming the largest military state in the world. Not having been aparticipant in the Washington Conference, nor being confined by the Nine-Power Treaty, theRSFSR was free to do as it pleased, a situation that gave rise to problems of the utmost seriousness.
When the Washington Conference began in July 1921, Soviet Russian troops invaded Outer
Mongolia, ostensibly in pursuit of White Russians. The Soviets manipulated their puppetorganization, the Mongolian People’s Party, to form the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary
government. Now I will provide a brief discussion of the communization of Outer Mongolia,
referring mainly to Gotō Tomio’s A Political History of Mongolia.
Mongolia’s communist government asked that Moscow not withdraw Soviet troops fromMongolian territory until the threat from their common enemy vanished. Unsurprisingly, theSoviet Union gladly acceded to this request. In place of the Soviet partisans then stationed in Kulun(now Ulaanbaatar), the RSFSR dispatched a regular army unit, the 308 th Regiment, to OuterMongolia.
A great many powerless Russians who had absolutely no connection with Russian domestic strifefell victim to the RSFSR’s campaign to free Mongolia from capitalist control. Although themajority of White Russian troops escaped to Manchuria with their lives, a great many innocent
Russian civilians who had emigrated to Mongolia before World War I, or fled there to escape thechaos in Russia, met horrible fates. The Red Mongol Army perpetrated horrifically cruel acts on
those defenseless people. They looted and plundered, and pitilessly massacred any and every
human being they encountered — men and women, young and old, even children and infants. Withthe exception of the very few who managed to escape, every single resident of the Russian colony
in Uliastai was murdered. Like the massacre in Nikolayevsk in 1920, that assault was not spur ofthe moment. Though it may have seemed spontaneous or even justifiably vengeful, it was the resultof careful planning. 1
The fate of Tannu Uriankhai
Uriankhai (also known as Tannu Uriankhai) is situated in a remote region of western Mongolia. It
is here that the headwaters of the Yenisey River arise. Uriankhai lies between 50° and 53° north1Gotō Tomio, Mōko seiji shi (A political history of Mongolia) (Tokyo: Takayama Shoin, 1938).

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latitude, and 89° and 100° east longitude. It is surrounded in the north by the Sayan mountains, inthe south by the Tannu-Ola mountains, and in the east by extensions of these mountain ranges.
Because it is surrounded by steep mountains, Uriankhai is virtually inaccessible. In area itmeasures 170,000 square kilometers, making it the size of Portugal, Switzerland, and Belgium
combined. Uriankhai abounds in resources: it has many gold mines, as well as rich deposits ofother minerals, such as platinum, uranium, copper, iron, and coal. The soil is fertile; picturesquepastures abound. Forests, which occupy 25% of the country’s area, yield valuable timber. The
inhabitants are Turkic and closely resemble the Kyrgyz. The population was nearly 60,000 in 1925.
For a long time this region was terra nullius (territory that belongs to no state). Even in the Treatyof Kyakhta, concluded in 1727, the borders of Uriankhai with Russia and China remained vague.
The Sayans were designated as the southern border of Russia, and the southern slopes of theTannu-Ola as the border with China. Accordingly, Uriankhai was under the sway of neither Russia
nor China. Some historians are of the opinion that neither Russian nor Chinese authorities were
aware even of the existence of Uriankhai, and believed that the Sayans and the Tannu-Olas were
one and the same.
Russia set out to possess Uriankhai at the beginning of the 20 th century, during the reign of its lastemperor, Nicholas II. In the autumn of 1914, when World War I commenced, Russia issued adeclaration to the inhabitants of Uriankhai to the effect that Uriankhai was now a Russian
protectorate. During the European war, both China and Mongolia registered several protests, butthey were ineffectual. When the Russian revolution erupted, Bolshevik forces wasted no time inmaking an appearance in Uriankhai. In August 1921 Soviet troops arrived and created the TuvanPeople’s Republic.
Two years later, in August 1923, the Tuvan People’s Republic was renamed Tannu Tuvan People’sRepublic, real control of which was in the hands of the Soviet government and the Comintern. TheTannu Tuva People’s Republic was the first Soviet satellite state.
What lay in store for Uriankhai? In June 1941, when war broke out between Germany and theSoviet Union, the Tuvan puppet government convened a Soviet-style parliament called a Khural,
which proceeded to declare war on Germany. On August 17, 1944 the Soviet government
petitioned (or more accurately, commanded) the Tuvan government to merge with the USSR. In
October 13 of the same year Tuva acknowledged its status as an autonomous soviet socialistrepublic. Thus Tannu Tuva was absorbed into the massive belly that was the USSR anddisappeared, its life as a nation having come to an end. Forcing a puppet government to “petition”
for inclusion in the Soviet Union and having the Supreme Soviet shamelessly “acknowledging”
the “petition” is the exact same blatantly transparent method used by the USSR when it occupied
and absorbed the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). An examination of a map of Asia
reveals that part of the former Outer Mongolia, i.e., the region north of 50° north latitude andbetween 89° and 100° east longitude had been completely obliterated, as had the Tuvan People’sRepublic and Tannu Uriankhai. The only trace of them on the map is Tuvinskaya AutonomousSoviet Socialist Republic.
Why the Soviets seized Outer Mongolia

2Let us return to the topic of Outer Mongolia.
On November 5, 1921 the RSFSR and Outer Mongolia concluded the Agreement Between theMongolian People’s Government and the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic Regarding theEstablishment of Friendly Relations. According to that agreement, “[t]he People’s Government ofMongolia declares that it recognises in respect of Russian citizens possessing in Mongolia plots ofland or buildings the same rights of possession, lease and occupation of building plots, and that it
will apply the same methods of exacting taxation, rents and other payments in the same proportions
as are recognised or applied, or shall be recognised and applied, in respect of the citizens of themost favoured State.”2The Mongolians were granting the exact same privileges to the RSFSR as they had to Imperial
Russia. The November 5 agreement was kept secret for a time. When it was made public in thespring of 1922, the Chinese Foreign Ministry sent a protest to the Soviets, which maintained thatthe Soviet government had broken the promises made to the Chinese government in a manifesto
issued by Deputy Foreign Commissar Lev Karakhan, i.e., that “all previous treaties made between
the Russian Government and China shall be null and void, that the Soviet Government will
unconditionally and forever return what has been forcibly seized from China by the former
Imperial Russian Government and the Bourgeoisie.
“Now the Soviet Government has suddenly gone back on its own words and secretly and without
any right concluded a treaty with Mongolia. Such action on the part of the Soviet Government issimilar to the policy the former Imperial Russian Government assumed toward China,” adding thatMongolia “is a part of Chinese territory.”3
The Chinese continued to assert that Mongolia was part of China, but the response from the RSFSR
was, invariably, that the citizens of Mongolia had appealed to the Soviets to send Russian troops
to defend Mongolian freedom. The Soviets insisted that Mongolia could not maintain its
independence without the help of the RSFSR, and that the whole world knew that without that
help, Mongolia would end up as the prey of a neighboring nation. They justified their continued
occupation of Mongolia with their usual argument: “We are responding to an earnest request fromMongolia.”
Along this same vein, another argument the Soviets used, so typical of them, was, “We areoccupying Mongolia for Mongolia’s sake.” This is a foreshadowing of the excuse the Soviets usedin August 1945 when they unilaterally scrapped the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact and proceeded
to encroach on Japan.
The Soviet Government considers that this policy is the only means able to bringpeace nearer, free the people from further sacrifice and suffering and give the2Jane Degras, ed., Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy (Volume 1, 1917-1924) (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1951), 484-487; https://archive.org/details/sovietdocumentso0000jane/page/486/mode/2up?q=484.

Alfred L.P. Dennis, The Foreign Policies of Soviet Russia (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1924), 324;
https://archive.org/details/foreignpolicieso006529mbp/page/336/mode/2up?q=%22unconditionally+and+forever+ret
urn%22.
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Japanese people the possibility of avoiding the dangers and destruction suffered byGermany after her refusal to capitulate unconditionally. 4

We must never allow ourselves to forget what the Soviets did later in Manchuria and Sakhalin.
Did they free the Japanese there from “further sacrifice and suffering” and help them avoid dangerand destruction? Far from it! They inflicted unspeakable violence and cruelty on them.
Before long the Soviets (now the USSR) promulgated a Soviet-style Constitution on behalf of its
puppet Mongolian government and established the Mongolian People’s Republic, which became
the second satellite state of the Soviet Union in November 1924. That was a sign that China’ssuzerainty over Mongolia was now only a formality. The Constitution of the Republic of China
stated that Inner and Outer Mongolia were part of the “territory of the Chinese Republic,” 5 butthese were empty words. For all intents and purposes, Outer Mongolia would follow the trajectoryof a closed communist country under the thumb of the Soviet Union.
Setting the stage for the Manchurian Incident
Japan’s Siberian Expedition was practically coincidental with Soviet intrusion into OuterMongolia and Tannu Uriankhai. Though the objective of Japan’s mission in sending troops toSiberia was to prevent the infiltration of communist forces into the Far East, the US viewed it witha jaundiced eye, and Japan soon became the target of international criticism. The Americans failed
to comprehend the terrible significance of the invasion and communization of Outer Mongolia andTannu Uriankhai. They uttered not one word of criticism against the Soviets; to make mattersworse, they did not even attempt to check the Soviet menace. And what was the outcome? The
communization of Outer Mongolia, which set the stage for the communization of China. Moreover,it facilitated the penetration of communism into Manchuria. The assertion that the Soviet
usurpation and communization of Outer Mongolia accelerated the threat of communism in the Far
East, and set the stage for the Manchurian Incident, which erupted 10 years later, is in no way anoverstatement.
Soviet encroachment on Outer Mongolia and Uriankhai was clearly a violation of the Karakhan
Manifestos issued in 1919 and 1920, and a blatant betrayal. I have already mentioned the Chinese
protest. The Soviet Union invasion of Outer Mongolia and the Uriankhai region the year after thesecond manifesto was issued came as a surprise. Furthermore, the period during which the Soviet
Union tightened its grip on Outer Mongolia and Uriankhai is exactly contemporaneous with theone during which the Soviet Union was pressuring the Chinese Nationalist Party to align itself
with the communists. In the history of the Far East, there had heretofore been no display ofoutrageous, shameless behavior the likes of this one.

“Soviet Declaration of War on Japan,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/s4.asp.
4M. Joshua Bau, Modern Democracy in China (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1924), 394;
https://archive.org/details/moderndemocracyi0000baum/page/n19/mode/2up?q=%22provisional+constitution%22.
54Impotence of the Washington Conference
Actions taken by the Soviet Union, as described above, were attempts to challenge the ethos of theWashington Conference. Consider the Nine-Power Treaty that emerged from the conference. InSection (3) of Article I, the Contracting Powers, other than China, agree “to use their influence forthe purpose of effectually establishing and maintaining the principle of equal opportunity for thecommerce and industry of all nations throughout the territory of China.”6 In Section (4) they agree“to refrain from taking advantage of conditions in China in order to seek special rights or privileges
which would abridge the rights of subjects or citizens of friendly States, and from countenancing
action inimical to the security of such States.”7
The Soviets, however, did not participate in the Washington Conference. It is true that OuterMongolia and China are not one and the same. But the RSFSR, seizing upon the opportunity
provided by the chaos that prevailed in the early 1920s, infiltrated Outer Mongolia and Uriankhai,
communized the region, and closed it off to all other states. It seemed as though by doing so, theSoviets were not only contradicting the international objectives and ideals symbolized by theWashington Conference, but also willfully and deliberately challenging them.
The US and the other participants in the Washington Conference made prodigious (and successful)
efforts to deprive Japan of its special interests in China and Manchuria, and to discourage Japaneseadvancements into China. On the other hand, those same nations worried not a bit about Soviet
government encroachment on Outer Mongolia and Uriankhai, and what is more, did not lift a finger
to stop them. Consider the serious effects their inaction had on Far Eastern history in later years.
The documents signed at the Washington Conference are characterized by the complete absenceof a force that would guarantee stability in Asia.
When we contemplate subsequent events, such as the Manchurian Incident and the 2 nd SinoJapanese War, we must not forget that preceding them by more than 10 years, was the usurpationof Outer Mongolia, which is contiguous with Manchuria and North China, by the Soviets. They
now had a frontline base for their campaign to communize Asia.
Arms reduction, the Open Door Policy, and international cooperation represented the ideals andspirit of the Washington Conference. The Soviets ignored them all and set about trampling onthem. Japan, and only Japan, had the insight to awaken to the seriousness of the situation, and toforesee its horrific outcome.

Treaty Between the United States of America, Belgium, the British Empire, China, France, Italy, Japan, theNetherlands, and Portugal, Signed at Washington February 6, 1922, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History
and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/tr22-01.asp.
6

7

Ibid.

5